Time Stopped

(I posted 'Time Stopped', Karnit Goldwasser's eulogy to her husband Ehud last summer.
In honor of Ehud and all of our fallen we remember today.)

"July twelfth, two thousand and six, nine and three minutes. Time stopped."

"On the morning of July 12, 2006 at marker 105 on the northern border a journey began for the two of us. You and me. Us, the family and you. All of us, the nation and you. My love, they say that time does what it will, Heals and closes wounds, but does it?"

"For two years I have spoken in the name of two, Eldar and Udi. Regev and Goldwasser. The struggle to bring you home to us was a joint effort from day one. But today, for the first time, I allow myself to speak to you alone. Today I can't conceal, that my mouth and my heart are one. And the heart …. the heart, my love, weeps and pains."

"Forgive me, dearest, if I don't name here all of your wonderful qualities, your character, your inner beauty so rare; that were a light unto my feet and were at my side every step of the way in the struggle to bring you back to us. Please, my love, let this painful and intimate farewell, let me do in my own way, as you would if you could if only you could make yourself heard."

"During your long absence, as time passed on, your face belonged to one and all. Udi, the private person, my Udi, was suddenly our Udi. All of ours."

"July twelfth, two thousand and six, nine and three minutes, and time stopped for you. The morning of July 12, 2006 at marker 105 on the northern border, our journey began. For the two of us, you and me. For us, the family and you. For the nation and you."

"Today our journey is done and come to its end. We, just you and I, are now setting out on the next journey, the journey of my life. You will be part of it, silent but active, hidden but inspiring, concealed from all but before my eyes always. You will always be my second inner voice, forever young, that will be with me for as long as I live."

"July seventh, two thousand and eight, noon; and time has started anew."


(From Karnit Goldwasser's farewell to her husband Ehud, who was returned from Lebanon and buried yesterday.)

Nimrod's Children

"Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth." (Genesis 11:9)

Mexican film director Alejandro González Iñarritu is the movie industry's version of Pablo Picasso, chopping up stories and rearranging them without regard to time or space in a collage as cryptic as one of the Spanish artist's creations. While the method is engaging, unless one is blessed with an unusual memory, you need to see Iñarritu's films twice to really understand what you've seen.

Babel is four stories filmed on three continents in four languages which seem to have little or nothing in common at first - Moroccan goatherds in the Atlas mountains, an American couple on vacation, a Hispanic woman and her young charges at a wedding in Tijuana and a rebellious teenaged deaf/mute in Tokyo. What's the connection? Chance; seemingly insignificant details are the butterfly wings that blow a tempest once their consequences are felt on the other side of the globe.

Images of children in the book of Genesis are interwoven into the plot. The rivalry between Cain and Able, Ishmael abandoned to die in the desert, Lot's seductive daughters; the common denominator being the tragedy of characters driven by emotion and their flawed nature to unpredictable, if rational, consequences.

Babel isn't a film friendly to subtitle illiterate Americans, but one I recommend. Not because of the story(ies), rather so that you see for yourself that such a movie can exist. Save for the few human beings on this planet that are fluent in all four languages - English, Spanish, Japanese and Arabic – Babel would have been incredible and unintelligible only a generation or so ago.

Man has broken down the barriers of distance and language that have separated the human race with the power of the mind. Technology. After four or five millennia, Nimrod's children have once again built a city, a global village, and a tower. Iñarritu's Babel is a sample of the mortar between the bricks.

"And they said, Come, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." (Genesis 11:4)

Abraham's Children

Warning: I wrote a lot of stuff in this post about religious doctrine that’s real cynical, and it's more than likely to piss you off, so you're better off just reading one of my blogs about flowers and poetry.

The Apostle Paul once made an offhand comment in one of his epistles that since Abraham (the world's first convert to Judaism.) became a Jew by faith, so it figures that Christians are also Jews because they're believers. Paul didn't know it, but his friends let people read his mail and he probably never dreamed the fuss he would stir up when his remarks about who's a Jew (and who ain't) got canonized and became Church doctrine. The doctrine depends on which church you go to.

Catholic Church Doctrine:

The Jews aren't the Jews, the Christians are the Jews, but the Jews don't know that they aren't the Jews.

Protestant Church Doctrine:

The Jews are the Jews, the Christians are the Jews, but the Jews don't know that the Christians are Jews.

There is also 'Replacement Theory' Protestants that have this doctrine:

The Christians are the Jews, the Jews aren't the Jews but the Catholics aren't Jews either.

Naturally the Jews have a religion and they have a doctrine too;

Jewish Doctrine

The Jews are the Jews, the Christians are the Gentiles, but the Gentiles can think what they like.

I'm not sure why everybody wants to be a Jew, but it must be because they all reckon that since Abraham lived a long time ago, sooner or later his heirs (the Jews) will be coming into a lot of money. (That's what I thought when I converted to Judaism, but sadly I was mistaken.)

It's nice that everybody wants to be part of Abraham's family, but you can tell who is family and who's not when the going gets rough, and I don't recall very many Catholics and Protestants lining up with the Jews when they were being carted off to concentration camps by the Nazis. (The Nazis' doctrine was that the Jews are the Jews, the Germans are the Aryans and Aryans think they can get away with murder.) You can't blame Christians for not wanting to join Abraham's children when they're getting slaughtered, but on the other hand it seems to me that you can't turn around and claim to be a part of the family only when its fun and you can get an inheritance.

I've been told I'm a cynic and I'm probably a bit cynical when it comes to religion because religions tend to be pretentious and claim to be things they're not. But unless someone is a religious butthead, I try not to be cynical about people because there is nothing more hurtful than telling someone he's not what he says he is, what he believes he is.

Once someone remarked about me (being a convert and all):
"You're not a Jew. What's so Jewish about you?"
The question was cynical and not inquisitive, and didn't even deserve to be honored with an answer. And such is the nature of religions, especially when they question others.

A few years ago we stayed with my sister-in-law for one of the holidays, and my niece (Or I should say, my wife's niece since I'm only an in-law and only think I'm part of the family.) brought Tuviel and Talia, a brother and sister, with her. Seeing that they are black, at first I assumed they were Ethiopian, and then hearing their American accent, that they were African Americans and therefore not Jewish. It turns out that I thought wrong.

Of course I realized that certainly there are blacks that converted to Judaism; after all I did. But I had never heard of 'Black Jews'. Tuviel and Talia explained that centuries ago Jews had migrated to Africa or had been taken there in captivity by the Romans after they destroyed the Second Temple. Their ancestors had lived there for centuries until at some point they had been stolen into slavery in the United States. They even knew what tribe of Israel they belong to – Levi.

In spite of being white and only a convert to Judaism, I felt an immediate connection with Tuviel and Talia. Within minutes, in spite of not knowing their father, I knew the man that had raised them. Their dignity and bearing reflected values and knowledge as plainly as their faces, and while obviously there could be no blood relation, I felt a kinship I don't get from other Jews, not even from the family I'm married into.

And I think its because we have the same father. The Father. We inherited similar traits of faith and the desire to find and serve Him. I sensed that we share the same spiritual DNA.

Tuviel has since moved back to the US and over the Pesach holiday Talia visited us. She told me that sometimes Israeli Jews question her Jewishness. Not out of curiosity, but cynically, hypocritically. Their questions aren't questions, but a thin mask for bigotry, the intention being to derogate and the way asked insulting her intelligence.

Talia describes it as an inheritance dispute. That European Jews in particular don't want to share Abraham's birthright with Black Jews, who are all the more incensed because they suspect that many of their detractors in fact have non-Jewish pedigrees (Their reasoning behind this accusation is yet another doctrine.).

I'm only a guest, an in-law, at Abraham's table, so I probably should just be quiet and just listen to family discussions. But I don't like to hear Abraham's children fighting and bickering over his inheritance. I would like to sit with a family that wonders who inherited Abraham's big heart. Who has his eyes that saw strangers from afar and who got his legs that jumped up to fix them something to eat? Who has Abraham's hands that dropped everything when he heard Lot was in trouble and helped him out? Who inherited a mind that judges a man not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character? Who has Abraham's faith? Who received his courage to stand up alone against the idol worshipers of his day?

I guess that sounds naïve. Maybe I'm not so cynical.

I think Paul's remarks about Abraham's children were metaphorical, not doctrine. That Abraham's children are faithful and righteous, that the spiteful and narrow-minded aren't really his children and they only think they are.

But then, what do I know. As someone once told me, I'm not really a Jew.